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“Not,” Diana started, “that I don’t trust the members of Justice League Dark, but are we sure this is wise?”
“We’ve exhausted all other options,” Batman said. The core League members, Constantine, and Zatanna were in the Bat Cave where the summoning of another dimension’s god was being set up.
The League wouldn’t have gone to such drastic measures, but this is one of the rare situations where there was no mad scientist, sorcerer, alien, or god to be punched in the name of justice.
A strange dimensional rift occurred a few days ago, and the ensuing energy that was released seemed to have triggered the activation of an ancient ward on earth. The purpose of it was to safeguard the planet against extraterrestrial threats, but the surge in energy not only activated it, but made it malfunction so that with every passing day, the ward shrunk.
By Zatanna’s estimation, the ward will breach the Earth’s atmosphere in three more days.
After Constantine scoured his library, he found one entity that seemed to fit the bill in resolving their current predicament, and was benevolent, if the scrolls could be believed.
The scroll that Constantine found described a god representing freedom, the Warrior of Liberation, Joyboy.
Sun God Nika.
The hope was that if the League asked the god nicely, he'd help liberate Earth from the ward.
The summoning ritual was surprisingly straightforward. It only required a simple array and a meal. Well, a meal was an understatement. The summoning required a large feast to be offered. At least it didn’t involve blood or live sacrifices, unlike some gods Diana knew.
“It’s ready, give us some space,” Zatanna said as she and Constantine took their positions in the summoning ritual.
The array on the floor started to glow softly, until it became a blinding white flash of light that lit up the Bat Cave and had every League member either closing or shielding their eyes.
“Oof!” A thud. “ What’s the big idea?! Where is thi-, oh hey! Food!”
The light from the summoning array disappeared as soon as the new voice appeared. Diana opened her eyes and….had to take a moment to stare.
Sitting on the floor already helping himself to the feast was a young man (more like a boy, really), with wild black hair under a straw hat, in a red open vest showing an X shaped scar.
He was looking at them curiously while munching away on a turkey leg. “Hey, who’re you guys? Are those costumes? You look like Germa with the capes!” Diana watched with morbid fascination as he finished the turkey and proceeded to dump an entire casserole dish in his mouth, the food disintending his throat as he swallowed.
Diana blinked a few times before gathering herself. “Well met, young lord, we are-”
“Oh wait!!!” The (young?) god cut her off excitedly as he reached for the pot roast. “Are you guys superheroes?! Is that why you’re all wearing costumes? By the way, do you know where my crew is? We were fighting some weirdos that decided to pick a fight for no reason.” Diana, and the rest of her colleagues and friends could only stare at how the boy was devouring the food, never mind beginning to answer all the questions the summoned god had.
They’ve seen the Flash eat, but he ate how a normal human would, just with ten times the speed. This…Nika, ate like how she imagined an eldritch being would eat, if given a form of human flesh. Arms snaked everywhere and brought food back that was promptly devoured, all the while flesh and skin distended to accommodate the amount of food that Nika was eating.
All the League members tensed when Nika suddenly paused, an arm extended to the plate of sandwiches at the far end of the array.
“Oh, I forgot to ask, can I eat this food? It’s delicious!” Nika’s big brown eyes turned to them, cheeks bulging with food as he asked.
Diana could feel rising amusement from the situation, but judging from the suddenly slumped shoulders of her friends, not everyone felt the same as her.
“Yea mate,” Constantine said in a tired grumble. “Go for it, it’s for you after all.”
Nika swallowed his mouth full of food and broke out in the most blinding smile Diana has ever seen. And she had seen Clark’s Superman smile before.
“Really?! Wow, you’re all good guys! Come ‘n! You should all eat too, this is like a feast!” Nika suddenly gasped, “We should have a party!!”
—-------------------------------
And so they somehow, in the face of Earth’s destruction in less than 72 hours, had a party with the Sun God, who besides the inhuman appetite and propensity to stretch, did not seem much like a god at all.
They also somehow got a bonfire started. In the watchtower.
Diana is very confused, and as she passes by Zatanna and Constantine, she hears them whispering in a corner, something about “reality bending”, “emotional compulsion”....
It all sounds very concerning, and Diana would be more worried if the atmosphere wasn’t so…joyful at the moment. She could hear music playing to the beat (of a drum? Where did that come from…), and Nika’s laughter somehow filling her own soul with happiness bubbling over into laughter as she chuckles over one antic or another that Nika is doing.
It wasn’t until the alarm blared, signaling that the ward is now within dangerous proximity to Earth’s surface that Diana’s mind…clears up? No, it was not clouded in the first place, but oriented towards the moment, the party. Making her focus on the here and now of the moment…Is this the emotional compulsion that Zatanna spoke of?
It’s a stray thought Diana had no time to dwell on. She heard Nika turn to Barry and ask what the alarm is, and after hearing his explanation, Nika starts to change.
Dum Dut Da Da
It’s the drums again, it’s getting louder…
Red vest and blue shorts faded to white, hair bleached the same color and rising with an invisible wind. A skinny string of clouds floating between arms.
Ah. So this is Sun God Nika.
Nika laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs.
And then he somehow…squeezes himself? Between the seams of the watchtower’s glass window??
The League crowds to the window the god just escaped from and sees Nika bouncing around in space, laughing and looking like he’s having the time of his life.
Diana thinks she can hear more than one mind break when Nika seemingly reaches out an innocuous hand at a distant star, making a motion to pluck it and actually plucking it.
Nika plucked a mass of extremely hot gas from who know how many light years away, and is now holding it in his hand what the actual fu–
The most mind bending thing is how the star transformed and is actually in the shape of a star, the kind you see in children books. And if Diana thought a star could have emotion, then she would say it was happy as it bounced around in Nika’s hand.
Distantly, as she tries to wrap her head around what is happening, she hears Barry whisper “Wha- what?? That’s not how physics works???”
She sees Nika raise the star high above his head and throws the goddamn star towards Earth holy shiiiiit.
More than one hero lurch forward as if trying to stop the utter disaster they think is happening, but it’s too late. The shooting star flies straight towards Earth and hits the ward.
At this point, the League just watches in silence as the ward….bounces with the force of the impact from the star, jiggles a little more, and promptly bursts into tiny pieces of light.
Right, Zatanna was saying something about reality bending powers too.
Nika zooms back into the watchtower, his head getting caught at the window, neck stretching before his head finally snaps back towards his body. Color bleeds back into the boy god’s hair and clothes.
The League stares. It feels like that's all they’ve been doing, that it’s all they can do at this point.
Nike throws a bright smile at them. “Shishishi, that was fun! Hey, do you guys have more food around here? Oh and music! Someone play some music!!”
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